"Geopolitical Setting"

Whatever happened to September 11?

Anatole Kaletsky

We were told three months ago that the world had changed for ever; that we had witnessed an event as transformational as Pearl Harbor or Dunkirk; that we must live on a war footing for decades or even generations; even that the Enlightenment era of materialist individualism was now giving way to a new Dark Age of tribalism, spirituality and blind faith.

So as this grim year draws to its grisly conclusion, with the addition of a weird new concept — the suicide shoe-bomber — to the lexicon of clichйs deployed by the media to make our flesh creep, how much has the world really changed? Not very much, to judge by the armies of shoppers in Oxford Circus or the near impossibility of securing a last-minute airline reservation to almost any destination where the sun will be reliably shining in the holiday season. These personal impressions of a solidly materialistic world, devoted not to spirituality, but to personal gratification and economic consumption and returning to business as usual are confirmed by objective indicators.

Stockmarkets are ending the year in fine fettle and statistics on retail sales, consumer confidence and even employment have all rebounded after their plunge on September 11. Even the fearsomely fanatical Muslim warriors of Afghanistan have turned out to be more susceptible to the power of Mammon than to the will of Allah.

To say that the world is returning to business as usual is not to deny that some things have permanently changed. We will all be a little more worried about boarding airliners and maybe even working in tall buildings. But most of the long-term changes wrought by September 11 are likely to be for the better.

First and foremost, September 11 and the subsequent rout of the Taleban reminded us that religion should have no place in modern politics or diplomacy. We will all be a lot more suspicious of religious fanatics, not only of Muslims, but also of Jews who quote the Old Testament to justify their occupation of Palestine, and of Christians who claim a God-given right to attack abortion clinics. We have been reminded that mainstream religions are as capable as the Branch-Davidians of Waco or the Japanese Aum sect of spawning insane, murderous cults. We have also been reminded that theocracy has always been a disastrous form of government. Theocracies usually foundered even in Classical times, when Jesus specifically reminded his followers to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. Religion is even less likely to succeed as a principle of political organisation in the modern technological world.

Turning to geopolitics, there have also been genuine realignments. The most obvious has been the damage done by September 11 to the Palestinian movement and the cause of Islamic fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. September 11 is also palpably weakening Islamic insurgencies — and strengthening established governments — elsewhere in the Muslim world, from Algeria and Egypt to Indonesia and the Philippines.

A more surprising beneficiary has been Russia. Russia’s geopolitical gains are a function not just of the unexpected alliances created by the war against terrorism and the instant friendship apparently struck up between Presidents Bush and Putin, but of much bigger economic and ideological changes.

At the personal level, Mr Putin turned out to be an even more useful ally for America than Tony Blair, and was duly rewarded with US media adulation. Thomas Friedman, the chief foreign policy commentator of The New York Times, ended his year-end encomium for the Russian President with a phrase that seemed to summarise perfectly the depth of analysis for which the US foreign policy establishment has always been noted — “Keep rootin’ for Putin”.

Fortunately for Mr Putin, Russia’s reinstatement as a leading international and European power can rely on something more reliable than President Bush’s camaraderie or even America’s feelings of gratitude after September 11. There have been three changes that should favour Russia’s relationship with the West in the years ahead.

First, the new focus on Middle Eastern instability and especially on the leading role played by Saudi Arabia in fomenting Islamic fundamentalism has made the West understand that it needs a more reliable long-term source of oil and gas.

Fortunately, Russia and former Soviet republics over which Moscow still exercises strategic influence are capable of producing more oil and far more natural gas than Saudi Arabia’s current output. As a result, much closer economic links, involving huge volumes of long-term investment, now suddenly seem almost as indispensable for the economic health of Western Europe and America as they clearly are for Russia.

Secondly, the dazzling display of US weapons technology in the past few months may finally have persuaded a large part of the Russian military-industrial complex that competition with the West is doomed to failure. The few Russians who may still have harboured nostalgic Stalinist illusions about their nation’s invincible military power will surely have been disabused by the fact that this display of American prowess occurred in Afghanistan, the land that symbolised the greatest failure of modern Russian arms.

Thirdly, the leading role of Chechen fighters in al-Qaeda will doubtless make America and the West more supportive of Russia’s struggle in Chechnya. More importantly, the defeat of the Taleban and the pressure on Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries to repress Islamic fundamentalist extremists should help to reduce the funding for the Chechen rebels and thereby diminish the biggest single domestic problem President Putin has faced.

Finally, America. It was in America that the greatest changes were expected and, with every day that goes by, it looks like America was changed least of all. Not only has America’s irrepressible optimism and self-confidence begun to return with the victory in Afghanistan, so has Washington’s arrogance and its unilateralism. This is apparent not only in the abrogation of the ABM Treaty and the talk of a unilateral attack on Iraq but also in less spectacular — but ultimately more important — manifestations, such as the new legislation to protect American farmers at the expense of Third World countries and the intensifying resistance in Washington to taking any interest in global climate change.

The absence of change in American domestic politics has been even more remarkable. It is now clear that the “bipartisan spirit” in Washington after September 11 was just a very brief aberration. The ideological hatred between Congressional Democrats and Republicans has exploded back to Clinton-impeachment intensity. In the past few days of the 2001 session Congress failed to pass an economic stimulus Bill, an anti-terrorist insurance Bill and a host of other urgently necessary measures. It even failed to confirm a new federal administrator for airline security. These events have conveyed a clear lesson. From now on, the date governing US political life will not be September 11, 2001, but November 5, 2002.

That is the date of the mid-term Congressional elections, when the Democrats have a good chance of ousting the Republican majorities in both Houses and turning George W. Bush into a lame duck. To do that, of course, the Democrats want the present “Bush recession”, or at least some kind of an economic malaise, to continue for as long as possible. The right-wing zealots among the Republican leadership, on the other hand, see the present war fever and terrorist paranoia as a golden opportunity to impose market fundamentalism and anti-tax economics and extirpate Clinton-style moral degeneracy, which in their view has dominated America since the 1960s. They, too, relish a fight to the death in the congressional elections ahead.

President Bush seems to lack the intelligence or the leadership ability to overcome this political fanaticism and economic sabotage. He cannot force the Democrats to support the right-wing fundamentalist agenda of the Republican leadership. And he seems unable or unwilling to force Republican fundamentalists to compromise with mainstream Democrats.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001600195,00.html